wav3line
wav3line — Enterprise Indoor Positioning
GPS ends at the door.
Indoor navigation begins.
wav3line is an indoor positioning and navigation platform built for shopping centres and airports. Bluetooth (BLE), Wi‑Fi, and motion-sensor data fuse into a live indoor position, then power AI-guided wayfinding, visitor analytics, and tenant engagement — the infrastructure large venues need where GPS can't reach.
See our products Request a demoThe problem
GPS wasn't built for indoors
Satellite positioning needs a clear line of sight to space. Walk through a mall entrance or an airport terminal and that signal has to pass through concrete, steel reinforcement, and low-emissivity glass — the exact materials large venues are built from. What gets through is too weak, too delayed, or too inconsistent to place someone on a specific floor, let alone in front of a specific store or gate.
That's the gap wav3line closes. Instead of waiting for a satellite signal that was never going to arrive reliably indoors, we fuse three signal sources a venue and a phone already have — Bluetooth beacons, Wi‑Fi, and the phone's own motion sensors — into one continuously updated indoor position. It's the same category of problem as indoor mapping and indoor location technology generally, solved with infrastructure a venue can actually deploy.
Products
One indoor positioning engine. Two navigation products.
The same live-positioning core, tuned for shopping centre navigation and airport navigation.
FOR SHOPPING CENTRES
MallWave
AI-powered indoor navigation for shopping centres: a live blue dot inside the mall, a trip planner that sequences a shopper's whole visit, a Shop AI assistant, and a concerts & events hub.
- Turn-by-turn mall navigation, floor to floor
- AI-planned multi-stop shopping routes
- Foot-traffic & dwell-time analytics for mall management
FOR AIRPORTS
GateView
The same indoor positioning engine, rebuilt for a terminal: AI-powered airport navigation gate-to-gate, a flight-prep planner, an Airport AI assistant, and live flight info.
- Landside-to-airside navigation through security, automatically
- AI-planned routes to Duty Free, lounges, and food before boarding
- Live gate directions tied to your actual flight
Technology
How the live position works
GPS doesn't reach indoors, so wav3line fuses three signal sources — BLE positioning, Wi‑Fi, and motion — into one live indoor position, mapped continuously in real time.
AI layer
AI-powered navigation, not just a map
A blue dot only tells someone where they are. wav3line's AI layer decides where they should go next — sequencing stops, answering questions in plain language, and adjusting the route the moment something changes.
Turns a shopping list or a boarding pass into an ordered route across floors and zones, instead of leaving visitors to work it out from a static directory.
Shop AI and Airport AI answer wayfinding, retailer, and flight questions in natural language, then walk the visitor there.
Gate changes, closed stores, or a missed turn update the route automatically, using the same live position that drives navigation.
Industries
Built for shopping centres and airports
Different buildings, different journeys — the same underlying platform, tuned to what each operator is optimising for.
SHOPPING CENTRES
Smart mall navigation that pays for itself
Mall navigation and an AI shopping assistant give visitors a reason to stay longer and see more of the centre, while tenants get placement visibility and foot-traffic data they can't get anywhere else.
- Longer dwell time and more stores visited per trip
- New recurring revenue from tenant placement & promoted events
- Foot-traffic and conversion data for leasing and marketing decisions
AIRPORTS
Airport navigation that reduces missed flights
Gate-to-gate indoor navigation and a flight-aware assistant cut the anxiety of a large terminal, and turn dwell time before boarding into duty-free, lounge, and food & beverage revenue.
- Fewer missed gates and late boarding calls
- More landside and airside dwell time converted to spend
- Operational visibility into passenger flow at security and gates
Tenant advertising
Store visibility and revenue, built into the walk
Every navigated route is also ad inventory: two advertising surfaces are already live in both product demos, tied to real store and gate nodes rather than bolted on as a static banner — and measured the way digital advertising is measured, from wav3line's own first-party position data.
A sponsored banner surfaces automatically whenever a visitor's live route passes a promoted store or gate — ambient visibility tied to actual foot traffic, not a slot nobody scrolls past.
A dedicated tab lists every tenant's current offer with one-tap navigation to the store — visibility that doesn't depend on a visitor happening to walk nearby.
Every walk-past and every Shop tab tap-through is a countable impression — reach a venue can report to tenants today, built on wav3line's own positioning data. Identity-linked targeting — matching that reach to an ad audience the way Meta or Google Ads do — is the direction the advertising product is heading, for venues that want sharper targeting than anonymous foot traffic alone.
Both surfaces feed the same subscription model below — venues sell tenant placement and promoted events as an ongoing revenue line, not a one-off insertion fee. Try it: open either demo's Shop tab, or walk a route past a promoted store, to see both surfaces live — MallWave · GateView.
Analytics
Visitor analytics built on the same live position
Every position update that powers navigation also feeds a venue-level analytics layer — foot traffic, dwell time, and flow, without extra hardware or a separate system to manage.
Zone- and store-level visit counts and time spent, aggregated across the venue.
How visitors actually move between zones, floors, and gates — not just where they end up.
Foot-traffic reporting tenants and retail categories can use directly, without hardware of their own.
Where and when a venue gets busy, down to the floor and zone.
Enterprise deployment
Built to roll out like enterprise infrastructure
wav3line is designed to be evaluated, piloted, and rolled out the way large venues already run technology projects, not adopted like a consumer app.
Site assessment
We map beacon density, existing Wi‑Fi coverage, and floor plans against the venue's layout before anything is installed.
Pilot deployment
A scoped pilot — one wing, one terminal, one floor — validates accuracy and integration before a wider rollout.
Phased rollout
Coverage expands zone by zone, on the same infrastructure, with no re-platforming between pilot and portfolio scale.
Ongoing operation
Beacon health, positioning accuracy, and analytics are monitored on an ongoing basis as the venue changes — new tenants, new layouts, new events.
Scalability is architectural, not aspirational: the same platform that runs one wing of one mall runs a multi-terminal airport or a multi-site property portfolio, because each venue's positioning runs on its own local beacon and Wi‑Fi layer rather than a shared bottleneck.
Security & privacy
Positioning stays anonymous. Advertising can go further.
Indoor positioning itself only needs to know where a device is relative to a building, not who is carrying it — and by default, that's how wav3line's positioning layer works: beacon and Wi‑Fi signal data computes a position, not a profile of the person carrying the phone. Aggregated foot-traffic and dwell-time reporting is built from that position data.
Tenant advertising is a separate layer on top, and it's where identity can come in. For venues that want sharper targeting — matching a visitor to an ad audience, the way Meta or Google Ads already do — identity-linked advertising is the direction we're building toward. It isn't wired into any deployment today; opting into it changes what a venue commits to, since it brings its own consent and data-protection obligations on top of what anonymous positioning needs.
Built on recurring revenue, not one-off fees
Every wav3line product runs on monthly B2B subscriptions — venues and tenants pay for visibility, analytics, and promotion — rather than a single upfront placement fee.
Recurring revenue compounds instead of resetting to zero, matches how venues already budget, and funds the ongoing work of keeping each live map accurate.
Two lines sit under that model: a venue-level platform subscription, and tenant-level advertising — walk-past placement and Shop tab slots — sold by the venue with wav3line's platform underneath. Both scale with the venue's own foot traffic today; identity-linked targeting, integrated with networks like Meta or Google Ads, is the direction that second line is heading for venues that want it.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How does indoor positioning work without GPS?
wav3line fuses three signal sources a venue and a visitor's phone already have access to: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons installed through the venue, the building's existing Wi‑Fi network, and the phone's own motion sensors. Combining all three produces a live position accurate to roughly 3–5 metres, updated continuously as someone moves.
What hardware does a venue need to install?
BLE beacons are the main addition — typically one every 50–100 metres through common areas. Wi‑Fi reuses the venue's existing network as a fallback layer, so there's no separate access-point rollout required for that part of the system.
How long does deployment take?
It depends on venue size and layout complexity. A typical path starts with a site assessment and a scoped pilot on one wing, floor, or terminal, then expands zone by zone once accuracy is validated — the same approach used for other venue infrastructure projects.
Is wav3line available for shopping centres and airports outside Cape Town?
The platform is not tied to a specific city — Cape Town is where wav3line is starting, not a constraint of the platform. Our interactive demos illustrate the product with realistic floor plans, and the underlying positioning engine works from any venue's own floor plans, beacon layout, and Wi‑Fi network.
What data does wav3line collect about visitors?
Positioning itself is designed around locating a device relative to the building, not identifying the person carrying it, and analytics — foot traffic, dwell time, flow — are built from aggregated position data by default. Tenant advertising is a separate layer where identity-linked targeting is a direction we're building toward, not something active in any deployment today; a venue opting into it takes on its own consent and data-protection review on top of what positioning alone requires.
How is wav3line priced?
Every product runs on a recurring B2B subscription rather than a one-off licence fee — venues and tenants pay for placement visibility, analytics access, and promoted events. Pricing is scoped per venue during the pilot conversation; there's no self-serve pricing page because deployments vary by size and scope.
Can I try the product before committing to a pilot?
Yes — MallWave and GateView both have interactive demos on this site, built on realistic floor plans, that you can click through right now. A pilot conversation is the next step after that.
Does this have to be a new app people download?
No. MallWave and GateView can ship as a hosted web app — opened from a QR code at entrances, directories, or in-store, with no download and no account — a standalone native app, or an SDK embedded inside a venue's own existing app. Same positioning and AI underneath in all three; which one a venue picks is a distribution decision, not a different product.
Paul Nyamwaro
FOUNDER, WAV3LINE
Building the live-positioning layer for the places people move through every day — MallWave for shopping centres, GateView for airports, starting in Cape Town.
Let's build your pilot
For enterprise demos, partnership conversations, and pilot deployments.
Enterprise demo
See MallWave or GateView walked through for your venue, beyond the self-serve demo.
Request a demoPartnership enquiries
Property groups, retail destinations, and airport operators exploring a fit.
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